Mitochondrial DNA obtained from the 700-year-old teeth of the first known New Zealanders  may help scientists track the migration routes of Polynesians through the Pacific. The DNA shows that each of the individuals in the study carried unique mutations, suggesting that a large population made the voyage, and the artifacts at the Wairau Bar archaeological site, where the people had been buried, all came from East Polynesia. “Now that we have identified specific markers in the mitochondrial genome of these individuals we can start to look for these markers in East Polynesian populations and perhaps identify an island or islands where we also find these mutations,” said Michael Knapp of the University of Otago.

A 1,700-year-old city featuring an 11-room villa complex has been unearthed in western Turkey. Six of the villa’s rooms contain mosaics. “The mosaics are decorated with animal and plant figures  that you cannot see anywhere today. They created the Anatolian panther, the Anatolian tiger, as well as a partridge and a rabbit. They are decorated with completely natural stones. You can see various shades of red, blue, and green,” said government official Osman Murat Süslü.

Charlotte Roberts of Durham University and Terry Brown of Manchester University have developed a system that analyses millions of gene sequences  in a matter of seconds. The new technology was used to identify tuberculosis in bone samples taken from 500 skeletons from across Europe. Scientists have been studying TB in skeletons dating from 100 A.D. to the nineteenth century in an effort to improve modern treatments and vaccines.

Archaeologists from the Regional Directorate of Culture in Cusco, Peru, unearthed a ceremonial pot and stones at Machu Picchu. The items are thought to have been left as an offering sometime between 1438 and 1470 A.D., but the pot is a couple of hundred years older.

Carl Lipo of California State University has proposed that the Rapa Nui “walked” their megalithic moai across Easter Island by rocking them from side to side. Incomplete and broken statues that litter the ancient roads of Easter Island support this idea because they lean forward, he says. That presumably wouldn’t happen if they’d been rolled along horizontally on logs. His team of 18 people “walked” a replica moai for 100 meters in under an hour using ropes. “It really hauls,” commented Lipo. Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, is not impressed, however. She points out that the replica statue was not an accurate facsimile of the Easter Island moai. “What this work has done is disengaged the statues from the archaeological context,” she said. You can watch videos of the moai transport experiments conducted by both archaeologists at Nature News.

The remains of 11 people were returned to the Sto: lo First Nation  by the University of British Columbia, where they had been held since the 1950s. The repatriation was prompted by a renovation of the university’s Museum of Anthropology. The remains will stay at the Sto: lo Research and Resource Management Center until their local communities claim them or decide where they should be laid to rest.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, October 23, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.